Agarwen
by starlightwalking
Summary: She cried the starlight out of her eyes, leaving the rest of her a cold and empty shell, her hands stained with the blood of her fallen love. ONESHOT.


In the woodelves' dialect of Sindarin, 'agarwen' means 'bloodstained', a fitting title for this reflection of Tauriel's loss.

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 **Agarwen**

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The light had long since faded from his eyes, but she still clutched his cold and lifeless hand. The blood between their close-pressed skins, once so warm and wet, now filled the cracks in her palms, staining her hand crimson. She wondered whose blood it was: the last remnants of his living body, shuddering as he bled and ceased to breathe; or hers, the blood shed by an irreparably broken heart.

The sticky brownness beneath her nails was a mix of filths: sweat from when she had fought and failed so save him; dirt from when she had dug her fingers into the ground in an attempt to crawl back to his fragile, broken corpse; and still more of the unclaimed blood seeping through her skin and into her soul.

How was it fair that she lived, her body whole and ever-young, when he lay dead on the icy ground, a chasm in his chest? So young, so _young_ he was to die. His promise had fled this world, and her happiness along with it.

There were so many things she hadn't learned from him—his hopes, his ambitions, the softness of his lips, his hidden wonders. She clung to what he _had_ taught her—a sweet smile, the light in his eyes, a murmured promise. The crashing loneliness he left her now. How was fair that a few days' turmoil would leave such lasting scars on the rest of her eternal life?

She had once loved the wind, loved how it stirred up the leaves in her forest home, dancing through her auburn locks with playful ease. Now it was a cold, pitiless breeze; tangling her hair, mocking her grief. Her hair was as red of a fire moon, once; now it seemed dull and angry.

She heard footsteps and looked up, her eyes devoid of any light or hope. It was her king, tall and noble battle-weary. The haunted, empty look in his eyes would have shocked her had her own soul not reflected the same feelings. She waited for him to mock her in his cold, haughty way, to tell her that he had been right all along, for he had. Her dwarf had died, and now she was alone with nothing to comfort her bleeding heart.

Instead he only stared at her, his eyes seeming not to see her, but some scene out of the distant past. She looked up at him, her lower lip trembling, and yearned for him to say something—anything—to break the awful silence.

"They want to bury him," she croaked out. She tightened her grip on her dwarf's bloody hand. The dwarves, his kin, had found them earlier, but blessedly, had left her alone after they told her their wishes concerning his funeral. She had said nothing, the grief still too raw to comment. She simply felt numb to the truth, clutching his hand as if somehow it would bring him back.

"Yes," the king murmured, exhaling the word like a long-held breath.

Why wouldn't he say anything of meaning? Her heart ached, and she felt tears spring from her eyes. Tears full of starlight, full of love and of memory, pure and precious as her life once was. She cried the starlight out of her eyes, leaving the rest of her a cold and empty shell, her hands stained with the blood of her fallen love. He had told her once, in a different age, it seemed, that the stars seemed cold. She had rebuked him then, but now she saw the night sky through his eyes. The stars were black, their lights gone cold, and she could find peace in them no more.

She did not walk in starlight any longer, for the stars no longer held any meaning to her, other than a memory of her pain, but she was now truly in another world from him. She remembered brushing fingers with him, her heart beating in time with his own, his murmured question, so innocent, so sincere: _Do you think she could have loved me?_

She could. She could, and she did. And now it was destroying her, eating her from the inside out. Was it worth it to have loved in the first place? Was it worth the pain she felt now, was it worth the blood? Ought she to have left him to his fate, stayed in the forest, with only the echo of regret and what could have been? If she had only gone with him to the mountain, instead of letting the prince distract her, then perhaps he would have lived...

Part of her didn't really believe he was gone, and that part still clutched his hand, but most of her knew he had left her forever, passing into the mists of death. That realization hurt, filling her entire being with a pain unlike any she had known before. It ran through her burning throat and into her tears, and she let out a sob of pain. Love she had never known before, not a love like this, that caused her such pain!

Looking up to her king, she cried out in anguish, "If this love, I do not want it!" She didn't know whether or not that was true, or if it was false, or a mix of the two. Nothing was worth this pain, not even those fleeting moments of foolishness and joy as pure as the starlight she had lost. "Take it from me, please!"

 _Anything_ would be better than this, even the cold embrace of death, or the emptiness of a mind void of emotion. She wished her king could take her back to the way things had been before this kind and wonderful dwarf had turned her life upside down and spun her through the stars, then dropped her through fire and into pain.

But he was still only an elf, and not one of supreme power, no matter how harsh and loveless he himself could seem at times. They made eye contact, and she saw something in his blue gaze that she did not expect. He shook his head slowly, and she knew he understood her pain. He had spoken harshly before, and so had she. She recalled her earlier words: _There is no love in you!_ How false they were. She saw now that he had felt pain as deep as hers, loved as deeply as she loved the fallen dwarf beside her, that he had been trying to protect her.

But she had not been protected, and neither had her dwarf. Grief overcame her and she sobbed out once more, "Why does it hurt so _much_?" Her voice wobbled and cracked, her broken love overflowing through her words and tears.

The king looked at her and she could feel his fatherly love for her renew. She waited for his response, yearning for comfort, knowing he, too, had lost his One, the prince's mother.

"Because it was real," he whispered at last.

She looked up at him and blinked. She knew that to be true. It was real, and true, and the brightest thing in her life, as well as the darkest. And that he acknowledged that, when before he had been so adamantly wrong...suddenly the pain was just a little bit less.

She looked back down at her dwarf's body. He was beautiful, even in death. She felt in the hand that did not clutch his own the stone he had given her on the lakeshore: the broken promise of his return. She slipped it into his empty hand, returning the promise to him.

She leaned down and kissed his lifeless lips for the first time, tasting the salty, sticky blood on his face, and it was not at all what she wanted from their first kiss. The taste of blood stayed in her mouth when she sat back up, as it would forever, a last, bitter reminder of what she had lost forever.


End file.
